ONE of Britain's top business leaders will join the Great North Revolution tomorrow when he takes his place on the panel for our first online debate.
CBI director general Richard Lambert will join the discussion at our Great North Revolution website from 11am.
Mr Lambert, who is a former editor of the Financial Times and sat on the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee for three years, attended the launch event of the campaign at Darlington Football Club earlier this month.
The Great North Revolution, which is being led by The Journal and our sister title The Evening Gazette on Teesside, aims to spark a debate about how the North East economy should look in 100 years’ time. The debate is centred on five key clusters of the new economy including low carbon transportation, digital media, healthcare, new energy and new materials and processes.
Speaking after the launch event, Mr Lambert said: "It’s critical the Government’s new industries, new jobs policy is led by business and not dictated by government.
"The event in the North East was the first to my knowledge where a region’s businesses have collectively considered the supply chain opportunities created by key UK trends including the move to low carbon, increased digital capacity and the implications of an ageing population.
"If North East companies can quickly align their business investment and R&D capability to developments such as electric vehicles, they have a chance of being contenders in not just the national roll out of these technologies but in the international infrastructure development."
Tomorrow Mr Lambert will join an online panel which also features a range of senior people from the North East business community, including Lucy Armstrong, chief executive of The Alchemists, Chris Pywell, head of strategic economic change at One North East, and Bob Coxon, chairman of the Science and Industry Council in the region. Visitors to the website at www.nebusiness.co.uk/revolution can join the debate at 11am tomorrow.
If you cannot visit the site to watch the debate live, then e-mail your questions to andrew.hebden@ncjmedia.co.uk. You will be able to watch a rerun of the debate on the website following its conclusion.